“I always forget how shit those drones are at flying,” Kamak said. For security reasons, the Wild Card Wanderer and its crew had been dragged into a drydock in deep space. Autonomous drones had done all the flying, which had the benefit of no living things in the universe knowing where they were, and the downside of drones being shit at flying. The machines could’ve been better, but every time somebody built a robot that was too smart, it ended up running off to join the AI collective, so manufacturers erred on the stupid side nowadays.

  “We got here in one piece,” Corey said. “That’s what matters.”

  When the boarding hatch finally opened, he was the first through the door. The first thing he noticed was the not-so-faint scent of alcohol. Boarding the ship felt like walking straight into an open bottle of rubbing alcohol.

  “Tooley?”

  No response.

  “Tooley, where are you?”

  “Quit yelling,” Tooley shouted back, with an obvious drunken slur to her voice. “I’m in the cockpit, dipshit, that’s where the pilot goes. It’s me. I’m the pilot. I go here.”

  “I’ll go talk to her,” Corey sighed. He walked into the cockpit and sealed the door shut behind him.

  “Good luck with that trainwreck,” Kamak grunted. “You need a hand getting settled in, Farsus?”

  “In a very literal sense, yes,” Farsus said. He was fully lucid now, and had even received some proper medical treatment for his injuries, but he was far from fully recovered. The damage to the muscles in his core made it difficult for him to lift his arms at all. Kamak and Doprel each took a shoulder and helped Farsus into his room. They shut the door behind them, and it stayed shut. The two most recent additions to the crew stood alone in the common room.

  “So,” Bevo began. She looked at To Vo. “Want to help me sharpen my axe?”

  “You need help with that?”

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  “It’s a big axe,” Bevo said. “And I’m trying to be polite. Don’t want you getting left out of one more thing.”

  “Don’t take it personally, Bevo,” To Vo said. “They have a lot going on, and we’re just on the fringes of it.”

  “I know, and that makes me so god damn mad,” Bevo said. Broad muscles tensed beneath her red skin. “I want to help, and I feel like I’m getting kept at arms length. Like I’m being excluded on purpose.”

  “That’s because you are,” To Vo said. “But like I said, it’s not personal. It’s just in their nature.”

  Bevo grunted with frustration and sat down on a couch. To Vo joined her, and tried not to feel dwarfed by Bevo’s comparatively massive size. All the giants around were starting to make her feel self-conscious about being so small.

  “Have you ever hunted wild animals, Bevo?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Bevo said. “Hurting animals makes me feel bad.”

  “Good instinct,” To Vo said. “I had to hunt for most of my life. It was probably the one thing in my life that prepared me for being on this ship.”

  “Because it taught you how to be patient?”

  “Because it taught me how to avoid getting bitten,” To Vo said. “Look, these guys, they’re all a little bit wild, in their own way. Things tried to tame them, and failed. I won’t claim to know what it is, but there’s something in them that just rejects structure, hates being chased or controlled.”

  “Natural rebels, yeah? Cool.”

  “Occasionally cool, and occasionally very very frustrating,” To Vo said. Occasionally a source of nigh-endless inane arguments, too. “Like wild animals, they are often prickly, hard to get close to, prone to biting, and, importantly: most dangerous when they’re cornered.”

  Bevo looked around at all the closed doors on the ship. She didn’t like how quiet it was. To Vo, on the other hand, acknowledged that silence as a calm before the storm.

  “You think we’re cooking up a comeback, then?”

  “They turned it around when things were at their worst with Morrakesh,” To Vo said. “Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I believe they can pull it off again.”

  “Hell yeah,” Bevo said. She sat up and leaned forward, then realized she had nowhere to go. “So what do we do?”

  “I’m not sure,” To Vo admitted. “I’m a little more domesticated. I like to think I help keep them grounded. Stop them from going completely feral.”

  “Feral sounds fun,” Bevo said. “But also like it’d get somebody in trouble.”

  “More trouble,” To Vo said. Though she wasn’t sure it was possible for them to be in more trouble right now. She’d been monitoring the news. Right now the media was making it seem like Kamak and the crew were bigger villains than Kor Tekaji. To Vo might have been concerned by that, if not for past events. The crew had not only survived the entire universe being their enemies, they had actually turned it into an advantage. To Vo had no doubt they could make it out of this serial killer nonsense in a similar fashion. There weren’t even any horrible arm-monsters involved.

  Yet.